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Image credit: Still from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Collating and summarizing information on the fly can greatly reduce Ring identification time. |
I couldn't resist the title pun, though I have a very strong opinion on the term "math wizard". (If you look at the etymology of the word wizard, "one who is wise" would seem to jive properly. But nowadays wizards are seen as dabblers in magic and unnatural arts, which couldn't be further from mathematics. Moreover, I think there's something remiss in labelling promising students in mathematics as "wizards" in their craft when competitive mathematics isn't exactly the mathematics people make careers [academic and otherwise] out of. High school / contest math is to
real [i.e. modern] math as Gandalf's fireworks are to Gandalf's defeating the Balrog; in other words, they are in a completely different scale of wizardry. But I digress.)
Anyway, I think any serious mathlete should have a notebook to write the formulae and strategies (s)he picks up along the way, a Secret Book of Spells if you must.
